My Experience with the Council Form - Essay Example

My Experience with the Council Form Introduction Group’s Council sessions are meant to gather reactions and obtain insights from a group interaction. One also gets preferences, opinions and attitudes from the participants. My experience with the council form, was a great experience, especially passing the talking object and waiting for someone to speak. It was a great experience because one would not have thought of what to say in advance, and therefore, one had to think fast and contribute to the topic. Additionally, it was interesting to converse with different people with diverse cultures. It was hard to discuss or say something with the group members when one was given the talking object, because everyone pays attention to you, thus becoming the centre of attraction. The council helped me accept diverse opinions than before, in addition to understanding those who disagreed with me. During the session, I noticed that it was interesting to listen to others particularly those who had different opinions from mine, especially when they supported them with studies and evidences. My little voice was thinking on their reactions, telling myself that they could be either right or wrong. I did not have a problem listening because I listened to each and everyone in the group, and realized that life is cool when we communicate to each other, as well as when we give each other an opportunity to argue and speak his ideas. To add to this, I discovered that, if one believes what he says and have evidence, then your conversation has a great effect on other participants in the group session and everyone will agree with you. I also learnt from the controversial topic that we can all discuss and come up with a correct answer, although I did not expect such a topic and therefore, my opinion was not changed, since I hate to hear or talk about it, though it was nice to hear people give their opinions on it. During the group meeting and group presentation, some of my strengths as a group participant were supporting my opinions with studies and evidences, showing that marijuana should be kept illegal. I was also the only member who was against marijuana, and therefore, my position was a specialist opinion. I played the role of trying to convince them in regards ti marijuana risks, but at the same time respecting their views, thought they insisted that they had to read and see more studies on its risks. However, they tried changing my views but they could not give me any strong and logic evidences either. I have learnt a lot from the group sessions, like having to listen to each and everyone, in addition to, those who disagrees with me and respect their opinions. During the preparation of our presentation, leadership emerged from our group, where Tom was elected to be the leader, where he led us effectively. The leadership was also shared, where Eric helped Tom in leading us as well as, helping each one of us. He was helpful as well as a good friend. There was also satisfactory leadership in our group session because we all got A’s. It was also easy for us to make decisions on how our presentation would be structured. This is because we respected and understood each other, which is very important in group work. If group members do not understand and respect each other, the group becomes disorganized in their final presentation. The consensus was easily reached because we all worked as a team although there were members with different views, but we still maintained friendship. During the preparation and council session, I felt that our group was cohesive because we balanced both productivity and cohesiveness in the group, and therefore, we did well in our overall presentation as well as got good grades. Our cohesiveness helped us come up with an excellent presentation. However, nobody was mean and we worked together as a team. We were also relaxed and comfortable when talking to each other, meaning that there was no one who did not cooperate in the group session. Nevertheless, we had some conflicts in the group, where it was hard for me manage and keep time with our group sessions meetings.This semester my classes were hard and therefore, I was busy. This made my life complicated in the sense that it was hard for me to get some free time. To add to this, I had difficulties with language especially when the group used idioms from slang world. Some of the aspects I liked on my group presentation and work were our relationship with each other. Each one of us was willing to listen and respect each other’s opinions. I was also satisfied with the respect that the group gave me, despite being a foreigner, they did not make me feel like I was different from them in anyway. However, some of the aspects that annoyed me were times when the group diverted our main topic to something else, and would take sometime before we returned to our subject. After the group session, I learnt that respect is very important in our lives’ daily activities. I had to wait for one person to speak and finish his points then, elaborate my points. I also had to listen to my group members’ opinions and views, and not disrespect them in anyway. As an international student, I learnt that it was essential for me to take part in such group discussions with other Americans from Native speakers in order to improve my language. It is not always good to stay with students from your own country all the time, in this case U.S because; your language does not seem to improve and can get worse. Read More